912
Souter, J., dissenting
and about giving attention to the pervasiveness of a school's sectarian teaching.
The plurality is candid in pointing out the extent of actual diversion of Chapter 2 aid to religious use in the case before us, ante, at 832-834, and n. 17, and equally candid in saying it does not matter, ante, at 820-825, 833-834. To the plurality there is nothing wrong with aiding a school's religious mission; the only question is whether religious teaching obtains its tax support under a formally evenhanded criterion of distribution. The principle of no aid to religious teaching has no independent significance.
And if this were not enough to prove that no aid in religious school aid is dead under the plurality's First Amendment, the point is nailed down in the plurality's attack on the legitimacy of considering a school's pervasively sectarian character when judging whether aid to the school is likely to aid its religious mission. Ante, at 826-829. The relevance of this consideration is simply a matter of common sense: where religious indoctrination pervades school activities of children and adolescents, it takes great care to be able to aid the school without supporting the doctrinal effort. This is obvious. The plurality nonetheless condemns any enquiry into the pervasiveness of doctrinal content as a remnant of anti-Catholic bigotry (as if evangelical Protestant schools and Orthodox Jewish yeshivas were never pervasively sectarian 29), and it equates a refusal to aid religious schools with hostility to religion (as if aid to religious teaching were not
29 Indeed, one group of amici curiae, which consists of "religious and educational leaders from a broad range of both Eastern and Western religious traditions, and Methodist, Jewish and Seventh-day Adventist individuals" including "church administrators, administrators of religious elementary and secondary school systems; elementary and secondary school teachers at religious schools; and pastors and laity who serve on church school boards," identifies its members as having "broad experience teaching in and administering pervasively sectarian schools." Brief for Inter-faith Religious Liberty Foundation et al. as Amici Curiae 1.
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